Reasons to Celebrate

• The Trump administration will be in charge of the United States Quarter Millennial celebrations in 2026. Herman Kahn (previously) was excited about America's bicentennial, and he wrote his best book in 1976 with his predictions for the next two centuries. Kahn thought these occasions were a big deal, an opportunity to set a tone and mood for the country, which he obviously thought should be Determinate Optimism to use Thiel's term. Sadly, he could not get dopey Gerald Ford interested in the bicentennial. Kahn would be excited about a presidential administration where the SpaceX founder has a front row seat.
• Trump can continue to advance a classical aesthetic in new federal buildings, planes, ships and so forth. Having the correct views on hierarchy and beauty is true conservatism, and a sign that Trump is a genuine article where Romney, McCain, and Bush were not. During his first term, Trump issued an Executive Order on Promoting Beautiful Federal Civic Architecture.
• Hopefully, Trump will replace as many of the monuments that were torn down during the 2020 cultural revolution as possible, and revert back the names of any places that were changed for woke reasons. We really need to change "Denali" back to Mount McKinley to honor a president who believed in the gold standard and protective tariffs and who was assassinated by a communist. It would be good to go on the offensive and build new statues and monuments. There should be a James K. Polk monument.
• For a half century, welfare has taken priority over space exploration. Now with Musk we can have an ambitious national goal of getting to Mars. This will be part of a broader switch to solution-oriented future optimism as described in The Conservative Futurist. Perhaps we can stop starving our society of energy and get the usage per capita curve moving up again.
• We may have seen the high water mark for the progressive mania over DEI, transgender, and race. Democrats got hurt in the suburbs, which means they took the woke stuff too far even for the prosperous suburbanites who are squeamish about Trump. In 2028, we could see more normal Democrat candidates. If they are smart, they will go back to talking about the Two Income Trap and open borders as a Koch brothers proposal. Note that Fetterman was the only Democrat smart enough to go on Rogan.
  
• Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) is now part of the the conversation. This can be an aesthetic triumph for the country as well as an example of solution-oriented future optimism. Universal ozempic? This would be the first time that the President cares about physical fitness since JFK.
• The "mainstream" media is over. Trump finally realized that he could get his message out much better via podcasts than with establishment journalists. The interviews that Joe Rogan did with Trump, Vance, and Musk likely helped win young men. As president, he can erode the legacy media by starving them of interviews. Remember when a federal judge ordered the White House to restore the press credential of CNN reporter Jim Acosta? Discontinue the obsolete press conference format where the press secretary talks to the establishment media and talk with independent journalists and podcasters on an invitation-only basis.
  
• It is going to be tough to explain why Kamala did so much worse than Biden in their strongholds like Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Atlanta. Already, liberals are seeking explanations for why she got ~15 million fewer votes than Biden, as though the GOP made them disappear somehow. (Strangely, the Trump vote totals were also lower than 2020 despite much higher enthusiasm.) Laura Ingraham was talking on Fox last night about how there is no justification for Florida having an instant count and the Democrat cities holding back their results for days. Better election security would lock in a more conservative future, like Florida after DeSantis cleaned it up. (Also look how much better Virginia is this time.) If the margin of fraud is ~5 points, even New Jersey and New Mexico would now be competitive states if fraud were cleaned up.
  
• Musk did a Spaces on election eve talking about his efforts in Pennsylvania. He said that after getting involved in this election he discovered that Republicans have not been trying very hard to win. Wiping out election fraud is one bit of low hanging fruit. Another is forming coalitions based on popular platform positions. Reasonable stance on abortion (Trump's "more weeks") and anti-crime is a winning formula. Shouldn't parents be able to take their kids to a playground without seeing junkies and their used needles?
  
• Another four years of Trump judicial appointments. As Nate Silver says, a Supreme Court seat is an order of magnitude more important than most political matters. Trump's first term picks have been great even though the district judges do not get a lot of attention. This will give Clarence Thomas a chance to retire if he desires.
  
• We will not have to see much more of Obama, Kamala, Walz, Cheney, Bush, or Romney again. Trump has remade the GOP and kicked the controlled opposition grifters out.
• The GOP has a great bench for 2028 with Vance, Youngkin, and DeSantis. For the first time we will be spoiled for choice. Strangely, no democrat was smart enough to disavow open borders and wokeness. (Fetterman should have done this when he was on the Rogan podcast. He should have said, "we are going to lose this week because Pennsylvanians care more about jobs than pronouns.")
  
• The threat of anarcho-tyranny and communism is greatly diminished. There is a big tent of people opposed to this stuff. No one wants to deduct an unrealized gains tax from their net worth spreadsheet. The California proposition on rent control (#33) failed 62/38. I would imagine Trump rounds up the Venezuelan militants up right away.
• Demography is not necessarily destiny. Trump did better with Hispanics than Jeb Bush dreamed of doing.
  
• This was another triumph for Twitter autists. (Musk is our king.) He looked for the lever to pull to have the most impact (getting 100k Amish to the polls in Pennsylvania) and made a huge difference. Also, the threat of scrutiny (with no censorship on Twitter) prevented Democrats from doing a big steal.
• Remember that Trump will govern to the S&P 500 index. This is a victory for capital (regional bank stocks were up 13% today) but that should temper expectations for populist change.

Good response from our friend Chris DeMuth Jr.:

Sabin Howard should get the next monument task along with an architect along similar classical lines.  And the FBI and other brutalist buildings should be unceremoniously demoed.  Neomi Rao is my next SCOTUS pick; with this POTUS and Senate majority, we can get great judges.  I’m elated about Musk’s role.  This is a defeat for a static deterministic future molded by legacy media.  It is an end of a demographic progressive ascension.  Hispanic voters are not only opting out of a leftwing coalition, they might opt out of a permanently separate racial distinction.  I don’t know what the future holds but I love that.  I hope it is human centered, dynamic, technologically audacious, multiplanetary, and surprising.  Glad to be here for it.